Canon DSLR Footage 10-Bit Colorspace Up-conversion Tutorial using Cineform
 

To do a 16-bit export, select RGB+Alpha and Trillion+ colors. The video shows an 8-bit export from After Effects, but otherwise is a cool workflow.

Video is now updated with the correct 16 bit settings. Thanks David!

Martin,

Thank you! I'm starting to edit a big project and I will be using your workflow. One question I have is why did you not use the sharpening within Neat Video? I've always found that to work well since the program seems to know not to sharpen the noise.

Thanks, Marc

Thank you Marc.

I found that sharpening within Neat Video did sharpen some unwanted artifact on low light (really noisy) shots but that might be me doing something wrong in Neat Video...

Best of luck with your project!

Marc, thanks for sharing! Great job.

Martin,

I did a comparison of Neat video sharpening vs. AE and you're right, AE looks better. What version of AE are you using? I'm still with CS3 and Neat Video is a real render hog. Are you using the 64bit CS5? If so, is it much faster?

Regards, Marc

Yes i'm on 64Bit CS5 and it's pretty fast specially when you render on multiple cores.

Thanks, this might give me an excuse to upgrade :)

Martin,

I put together a cheat sheet of your tutorial. Thanks again.


1. Convert to Cineform
2. Set AE to 16 bit in project settings
3. Add clip to composition
4. Apply Neat Video noise reduction process (enable ‘very low freq’)
5. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>unsharp mask’ (default settings)
6. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>sharpen’ (12)
7. Apply ‘noise and grain>noise’ (set amount to 0.4)
8. Composition>Make Movie
9. Output module settings:
• Format: Cineform AVI
• Channels: RGB+Alpha
• Depth: Trillions of colors+
• Format options: Set as desired
• Enable audio output if you want audio
10. Render project

Good stuff, here's some additional notes:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Convert to Cineform

2. Set AE to 16 bit in project settings

3. Add clip to composition

4. Apply Neat Video noise reduction process (enable ‘very low freq’)

* Very low freq is for very dark noisy shots like the one shown in the demo. If you are cleaning up well exposed footage you don't really have to check that unless there's large gradients (like a blue sky).


5. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>unsharp mask’ (default settings)
6. Apply ‘blur & sharpen>sharpen’ (12)

*These settings are to be adjusted to your need I really don't recommend "12" of sharpening on every shots. Unsharp mask default of 50 is a good starting point but again adjust to your needs.

Sharpening could also be done when doing final grading in your NLE. It would be better to do it at that point so you can adjust sharpness for each shot and go back and forth for matching the look of your sequences. In Premiere CS5 you have access to the same sharpening tools as in After Effects.

In extreme cases of noise reduction where 1 part of the frame is well exposed and the rest not so much I recommend cleaning up the shot and then dragging another instance of the same footage but with no processing and masking the well exposed parts (add some feather around your mask to soften it up). That way you clean up the bad compression blocking but you retain the original sharpness of your well exposed elements. That might require roto if your subject is moving but it doesn't need to be super detailed roto...


7. Apply ‘noise and grain>noise’ (set amount to 0.4)
8. Composition>Make Movie
9. Output module settings:
• Format: Cineform AVI
• Channels: RGB+Alpha
• Depth: Trillions of colors+
• Format options: Set as desired
• Enable audio output if you want audio
10. Render project

Great additions, keep the notes coming if you discover more :)

I am considering doing another tutorial on how to restore a practically unusable shot to a flawless looking shot ready for CC but it's a lot of work to put together... maybe next month.

Best,

Martin

In regards to the sharpening in your editor as opposed to AE would this still apply when editing in Vegas (8bit) or would I get better quality by sharpening in AE (16bit)? Thanks

Im not familiar with Vegas but I saw on their website the information below. It looks like you can work in 10bit.

---------------------------- from the specs of Vegas 10

Enhanced 32-bit floating point video levels mode designed to work like 8-bit mode but with the precision needed for 10-bit and higher sources and render formats
----------------------------

With that said I really don't know anything about Vegas.